New Ancient Rome Channel

The video embedded in this post is from a newish YouTube channel called Imperium Romanum. The presenters are based in the Netherlands, and plan to increase their production of videos in both quantity and quality and to cover all aspects of ancient Rome, including clothing and food.   

Above, I have chosen to show you a short documentary-style video about the clothing of ancient Roman soldiers and gives a good overview of the factors that drove Roman military clothing design.  Check the channel out if you have any interest in ancient Rome; the videos are short and fun to watch and contain good information.

Oldest Surviving Roman Body Armor

A recent article from Archaeology in Europe News reports on the find of a nearly complete set of Roman body armor found in the Teutoberg Forest in Germany.  This forest was the site of a disastrous Roman loss to German forces in 9 CE.  Archaeology In Europe News links to the original article from The History Blog, which can be viewed, complete with pictures, and read here.

The armor in question is of the type called a lorica segmentata--a set of largish iron plates shaped to fit around the body and laced together.  The armor was found by metal detector scan during an excavation in the summer of 2018.  Unsure exactly what the item was and knowing only that it contained a lot of metal, the entire block of soil containing the find was dug up whole and shipped to the Münster Osnabrück International Airport, which was the only nearby facility with an X-ray machine large enough to fit the soil block into.  The resulting X-ray revealed only a series of nails, which likely fastened a wooden crate large enough to hold the metal object, but did not penetrate the soil block.  The find was transferred to the Fraunhofer Institute in Fürth, which has a large CT scanner, and only after the CT scan did it become clear what the find actually was, and how it had to be excavated. 

The armor had collapsed and was crushed by the weight of the soil pressing upon it for two millennia. Despite that fact, and despite the extreme corrosion of the metal itself, the armor is surprisingly well preserved, complete with "hinges, buckles, bronze bosses and even extremely rare surviving pieces of the leather ties."  Plates from the shoulder and chest that were not in the original soil block have also been recovered.  There were no arm plates, which has been attributed to the design of this early piece.  Restoration of the armor is currently ongoing.

The find also contains an iron collar connected to a pair of handcuffs.  This item, also called in modern times a shrew's fiddle or a neck violin, was used on slaves and other captives; it indicates that the legionary who wore the armor had been captured, probably after the Teutoberg Forest battle.  

I love learning about finds like this, because it confirms that we have not learned all there is to know about the past. Archaeology continually uncovers artifacts like this one, which extend our knowledge of history.

From The "Nothing New Under the Sun" Department

Afghan man wearing a pakol

Boy wearing a clock, boots, and kausia.
Terracotta, made in Athens, 300 BCE

This evening, I was reading an Osprey text about the armies of Macedonia after the death of Alexander the Great, when I saw artists' images showing Macedonian army members wearing an odd kind of beret.  

I thought I recognized the beret.  It looked like a hat J. Peterman was selling in its upscale catalog back in the 1990s, which it labeled an "Afghan hat."  Nowadays, you can buy similar hats today on the Internet for as low as $9.99 USD; Amazon.com and Ebay sell such hats from various suppliers for prices ranging from about $15 USD to $30 USD.

When I attempted to find material on the Internet to confirm, or refute, my recollection, I came upon this Wikipedia article about a modern Afghan hat called a "pakol." Included with the article were two photographs from Wikimedia Commons (both featured here), one of a modern pakol, and one of an ancient Greek sculpture, showing a boy wearing a visually identical hat, which the Greeks and Macedonians called a kausia.  This style of hat originally was made as a woolen bag, with a bottom just a bit larger in circumference than the top. The bag is then rolled up until the hat is the right depth to sit comfortably on the head, and the larger bottom forms a kind of brim that lies above the rolled-up "headband." It is possible to tweak the circumference of the band by rolling or unrolling the bag.

At least some modern Afghans claim that Alexander introduced the hat to Nuristan and that there are modern Nuristans who are descendants of Alexander's troops. However, the actual adoption and wearing of the pakol in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and nearby areas today appears to date from the 20th century.

Back in the 1980s scholars debated whether Alexander's army introduced the kausia to Afghanistan and nearby regions, or whether he adopted the hat from the peoples there. One historical blogger summarizes the scholarly debate over the pakol's origins as follows:

It began with an article in American Journal of Archaeology in 1981, “The Cap that Survived Alexander”, in which Prof. Bonnie Kingsley made the arresting observation that the pakool closely resembles an ancient item of headwear, the kausia (καυσία)....

In 1986 Kingsley’s article received an academic response, and quite a decisive one. In Transactions of the American Philological Association Ernst Fredricksmeyer, an Alexander specialist, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the kausia was just too established a staple of the Macedonian wardrobe for it to have been imported from Central Asia toward the end of Alexander’s campaigns. ....

The debate between Kingsley and Fredricksmeyer rumbled on for a while ..., with Fredricksmeyer latterly slightly less confident about any connection between the pakool and Alexander the Great. The coup de grâce was administered by Willem Vogelsang of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden (under the not-so-catchy title of “The Pakol, a distinctive but apparently not so very old headgear from the Indo-Iranian borderlands”), who showed that the pakool is actually a simple adaptation of caps with rolled rims worn all over the borderlands of China, India and Central Asia.

But the resolution of the academic debate does not tell us where or why the pakol (or pakool) re-emerged.  If the cap was adapted from similar types of cap in Central Asia, why did it take the old Macedonian form?   Surely there are other forms such a woolen cap could take?  Maybe the answer is just as Vogelsang suggests; that an adjustable wool cap is ideal for fighters and military men in mountain country.  Though in a way, it seems a little odd that there isn't more continuity of use of the cap from Alexander's time and today, since in many ways life in the Central Asian mountains hasn't changed all that much in the past two millennia.

Whatever the reason, the existence of the pakol today is a minor boon for Alexandrine period reenactors, who can easily find a genuine-looking hat for their kit for a reasonable price.  Alexander's men appear to have worn the kausia in white, and undyed white wool pakol are among those easily available on the Internet.  If you want a pakol simply for style, black, brown, tan, and gray are also available.

New Book on Roman Military Dress

Speaking of the large number of great new costume-related books that have been, or will be, published this year, I'd like to mention one that may be more interesting to any male readers I might have:

Sumner, Graham. Roman Military Dress. The History Press (July 1, 2009). ISBN: 0752445766. ISBN-13: 978-0752445762.

I got a copy of this book this summer as a present for a friend who paints military miniatures, so I got to flip through it. It is chockful of lovely illustrations (both reconstruction-type drawings and pictures of actual period art and artifacts). Sumner wrote the Osprey books on Roman military costume, and this volume clearly draws on those, but appears to add extra material as well. Best of all, it's in paperback format and relatively inexpensive; Amazon.com is selling it for $25 USD.

I've added it to my wish list, and I think you should consider getting it if you have a serious interest in the Roman military or Roman culture in general.